Discipline infractions drop at Freedom and Liberty high schools

Suspensions, fights, bullying and other forms of poor student behavior dropped at Freedom and Liberty high schools during the 2011-12 school year, documents show.

The improved discipline picture is a reversal of 2009-10 and 2010-11 when infractions went up in the Bethlehem Area School District's two high schools as part of a districtwide increase of 36 percent.

Compared with the 2010-11 school year, suspensions dropped 20 percent to 978 in 2011-12. The number of students suspended three times or more went down 43 percent to 493 at the two high schools over the same time frame, according to the Code of Conduct report, which separates offenses into three levels of severity.

Level III offenses — which includes 20 infractions such as physical assault, disrespect, bullying and cheating — dropped 24 percent to 1,798 at Freedom and Liberty.

The most serious Level IV offenses — assaulting a staffer, having a weapon and habitually breaking the rules — went down 32 percent to 37 at the two high schools.

The decline in Code of Conduct violations coincided with the implementation of a new outreach and character-development program known as restorative practices at the two high schools last school year.

The restorative practices philosophy attempts to make personal connections between staff and students. It also aims to get student offenders to understand how their actions affect victims to prevent them from doing it again.

Dean Donaher, director of student services, told the school board's Curriculum Committee on Monday that he could not make a definitive cause-and-effect relationship between the discipline drop and restorative practices. He said more analysis would be needed to determine a reason.

School Director Gene McKeon offered his own idea for why offenses may have gone down. He said most of the expulsion hearings he sat through involved habitual offenders. McKeon thinks the board's votes to expel such students might have deterred others from trying to get away with bad behavior.

"I wonder if word got out we would not put up with it," McKeon said.

Superintendent Joseph Roy, who brought restorative practices model to the high schools, said dropping the hammer is not as strong a deterrent as engaging students.

Roy, speaking on Wednesday, said Donaher purposely played down the link between the discipline drop and the start of restorative practices at Monday's meeting "because we didn't want to overstate it."

But Roy said adding restorative practices was the only different program the high schools put in 2011-12.

Roy said he saw similar discipline declines when the restorative practices philosophy was adopted at two different districts where he served as high school principal.

"When you focus on helping kids realize the impact of their behavior, as opposed to just getting punished, you see improvement in behavior over time," he said.

While the high schools' saw behavior improve, the same was not true at the district's four middle schools, which do not follow the restorative-practice model.

What was different at the middle schools in 2011-12 was there were a dozen fewer teachers because the district disbanded team teaching as a cost-saving measure.

Donaher's report said a direct link could not be made between the loss of team teaching, which gives teachers more time to focus on academic, social and home issues, and rise in Level III offenses at most middle schools.

Level III offenses went up by 23 percent to 255 at East Hills; by 9 percent to 118 at Nitschmann; by 21 percent to 162 at Northeast. Level III offenses dropped by more than half at Broughal to 439.

Across all middle schools, suspensions dropped 13 percent to 419. The number of students suspended three times or more fell 86 percent to 55.